Original image by There Stands the Glass.
I often joke that disruptive people fiddling with paper at worship services and concerts sound as if they’re practicing origami. I suppressed a smile when I turned to see who was incessantly crinkling a program at White Theatre on New Year’s Day. A kid was actually engaged in an elaborate origami project.
Nevertheless, I glared at the noisemaker until his mother made him cut it out. I didn’t want anything impinging on my appreciation of cellist Kristina Reiko Cooper’s extraordinary playing on Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s dramatic “Fantasy for Cello & Orchestra” with the Kinnor Philharmonic. Having paid $19 for the concert, I intended to get my money’s worth.
The disruption by the crafty kid was merely a preview of the casual audience behavior. Many members of the audience of about 400 behaved as if the event was an outdoor picnic. A Tootie-worthy outburst compelled Cooper to momentarily pause during reading of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Variations on a Rococo Theme.”
Yet Susan Goldenberg’s invocation of Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning after intermission helped me take the tantrum in stride. By the time a rendition of "Hatikvah" concluded the concert, I’d resolved to be more patient with inevitable irritants in the new year.